Bruins season preview: Five key questions that will define 2026-27 originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Bruins exceeded most expectations last season by winning 45 games and earning 100 points to make the playoffs after finishing with the NHL’s fifth-worst record the year before.

It was an impressive turnaround by the B’s, but now the hard part has arrived. Can they build on that success and maintain their status as a playoff team?

The Atlantic Division figures to be ultra competitive, especially with the Florida Panthers — who were decimated by injuries last season — healthy again and having a better roster after trading for Brady Tkachuk.

The Bruins also have an improved roster, but is it enough to get the franchise into the playoffs? Let’s break down five burning questions that will define the Bruins’ upcoming season.

How much of an impact will JJ Peterka make offensively?

The Bruins needed another top-six forward this summer to take some of the scoring burden off David Pastrnak. Pastrnak has tallied 100-plus points each of the last four seasons. No other Bruins player has eclipsed the 70-point mark during that span.

The B’s paid a steep price — two first-round picks — to get JJ Peterka from the Utah Mammoth in a draft day trade in June.

Peterka had a bit of a disappointing 2025-26 season with the Mammoth, but he still tallied a respectable 25 goals with 22 assists in 82 games. He also plays with a lot of speed — something the B’s have sorely lacked in recent years. Can he take the next step and become a 30-goal, 70-point player in Boston?

“He’s got an elite shot,” Bruins general manager Don Sweeney told reporters at the draft in June. “Probably gives us another look on the elbows in a power-play situation. His power-play minutes dipped a little bit last year. His 5-on-5 production has been really good. Plays both wings. Could probably play with a couple different types of centers, help drive a line, but also complement the better guys in situations that we’re certainly trying to improve.”

Peterka has scored 25-plus goals in each of the last three seasons. He should be able to get to 30-plus if he plays with Pastrnak on the Bruins’ top line. Pastrnak is one of the league’s top goal scorers, but he’s also a tremendous playmaker. His 71 assists last season ranked sixth among all players and set a new career high.

The potential for Pastrnak and Peterka to be a very effective duo is high. If that happens, the Bruins should be much better equipped to score goals in the playoffs (assuming they qualify). They averaged just 1.25 goals over the last four games of their 2026 first-round series against the Buffalo Sabres.

Is there a No. 1 center on the roster?

Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

The biggest weakness on the Bruins’ roster remains the lack of a No. 1 center. They haven’t had one since Patrice Bergeron retired in 2023.

Elias Lindholm was supposed to be a top-six center when he signed a seven-year, $54.25 million contract as a free agent in 2024, but he has been a huge disappointment so far. He is, at best, a No. 3 center right now. Pavel Zacha is coming off a great 2025-26 campaign during which he set career highs with 30 goals and 65 assists, but he’s entering the final year of his contract. Is he even part of the team’s long-term plans?

Maybe a younger center such as Fraser Minten or James Hagens could step into the No. 1 role at some point, but that’s unlikely to be this coming season. Hagens has far more offensive upside than Minten, but he only has four games of NHL experience at the moment.

No. 1 centers almost never get to free agency anymore. So teams must draft and develop them, or find one on the trade market, which is obviously expensive to pull off.

The Bruins cashed in two first-round picks to acquire winger J.J. Peterka at the 2026 NHL Draft. If no one shows No. 1 center potential this season, the B’s might have to make another major move to bring in that kind of player. If you look at the last 15 teams that won the Stanley Cup, nearly all of them had a bonafide No. 1 center (and some of them had two).

Is Jeremy Swayman a top-five goalie again?

Swayman really struggled in the 2024-25 season after missing all of training camp due to a contract dispute. But to his credit, he bounced back with a fantastic 2025-26 campaign that resulted in him being voted a Vezina Trophy finalist for the first time in his career.

The Bruins were a poor defensive team for much of last season, but they still overcame those mistakes and reached the playoffs largely because of Swayman’s brilliance in net. He finished with a 31-18-4 record, a .908 save percentage and a 2.71 GAA. But the real story can be found in the analytics below:

There were reasons to believe that his disappointing 2024-25 season would be an outlier. He had been a very good goalie before that. But can Swayman play at a top-five or even top-three level going forward on a consistent basis?

The Bruins will need that kind of performance from him if they’re going to make the playoffs in a very competitive Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference. It’s a lot to ask of Swayman, but it’s the reality based on the construction of the roster. The Bruins don’t have enough elite offensive talent to get away with average or worse goaltending for long stretches of the regular season or in the playoffs.

Which young player(s) will step up and play bigger role?

Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

Fraser Minten had a very good first full season as an NHL player last year and posted 35 points (17 goals, 18 assists) in 82 games, while also shining defensively and playing a meaningful role on the penalty kill. After signing a seven-year, $50.4 million extension last week, how much improvement will we see from him next season? Can he hit the 25-goal mark? He might end up being the first-line center, which is a big responsibility for a 22-year-old but the B’s don’t have a ton of options for that role. The Bruins outscored opponents 23-7 when Minten and Pastrnak played together at even strength last season. It would be wise of Sturm to go back to that duo to begin the season.

Hagens also could make a meaningful impact as a rookie. He’s a great skater, his playmaking skills are top tier and his shot is both powerful and accurate. He got some NHL-level experience (two regular season games, three playoff games) last season, which will definitely help him entering camp. Hagens played on the wing for Boston, where his defensive responsibilities would be less than if he played center. But long term, it would be best for both Hagens and the Bruins if he shifted to center ice at some point. Hagens’ impressive offensive skill set could make him a key component of Boston’s power play, too.

Marat Khusnutdinov enjoyed a breakout 2025-26 season, tallying career highs of 15 goals and 18 assists. His scoring production, speed and versatility made him a valuable player. Can he take another step offensively and hit the 20-goal mark, or was last season’s scoring uptick more a product of luck and an unsustainably high shooting percentage (19.2 percent)?

Matthew Poitras has shown potential at both the NHL and AHL levels in recent seasons. Can he show enough consistency offensively to earn a regular role for the Bruins?

Unless the B’s make an in-season move for a veteran forward, one (or multiple) of these young players will need to play a larger role in 2026-27.

How does the blue line logjam shake out?

David Kirouac-Imagn Images

The Bruins have nine defensemen signed to one-way contracts: Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov, Mason Lohrei, Will Borgen, Connor Clifton, Jonathan Aspirot, Jordan Harris and Henri Jokiharju.

It’s nice to have so much depth, but there’s not enough ice time for all of these guys. Frederic Brunet, the Bruins’ top defenseman prospect, has also earned a chance to make the team after a strong 2025-26 season for the AHL’s Providence Bruins. Brunet, and the nine players listed above, are all waiver-eligible, which makes figuring out this logjam even more difficult.

“I think the competition is going to play out,” Sweeney said at a press conference Wednesday when asked about the blue line. “Clearly, we had an eye toward the fact that Charlie wasn’t going to start the year for six games. … You could run into injury troubles, last year we did, and we tested that pretty quickly. We’re in a good spot there. Will we have to make a move? Time will tell in that sense, in how the players play, how their health is. At some point in time, we will have to get to the waiver question and make smart decisions as a result.”

We know McAvoy, Lindholm, Zadorov and Borgen are likely going to make up the top four. Aspirot, who played well alongside McAvoy last season, could again be a consistent part of the lineup. Clifton was signed in free agency and probably will get every opportunity in camp and the preseason to be on the third pairing (maybe second pairing during McAvoy’s six-game suspension to start the season) come Opening Night.

So where does that leave Lohrei, Harris and Jokiharju? Lohrei is in the final year of his two-year deal with a salary cap hit of $3.2 million. Jokiharju has two more years left on his contract with a $3 million cap hit. He was a healthy scratch in four of the six playoff games versus the Sabres. Harris returned in free agency on a one-year deal after missing most of last season due to injury.

If the Bruins could trade Lohrei or Jokiharju and thus clear some cap space and maybe get an asset in return, that would be ideal. If there aren’t any trades to be made, it will be fascinating to see how this logjam plays out.

We made it, folks. It’s less than two weeks to Opening Night, there’ll be an actual hockey game involving some NHL players by the end of the weekend, and before we know it we’ll be marveling at a banner being hung in the Lenovo Center rafters—which may look different if promotional materials sent out to fans and photo shoots are any clue:

As things begin Thursday and members of the media will get their first real chance to chat with members of the team before things kick into high gear, here are a couple of the storylines to keep your eye on as they take the Wake Competition Center ice.

Alexander Nikishin Missing

It shouldn’t be a surprise following the blurb that Pierre LeBrun dropped earlier this week that Nikishin won’t be on the ice to start camp. Truthfully, without any sort of contract to play, there’s no reason for him to risk injury and get on the ice.

So after the fanfare to get him over from Russia to his debut in the 2025 playoffs and then a good but not great rookie season, the two sides continue to be at a stalemate. It’s one of those situations where you truly see both sides. Nikishin and his camp see some of new contracts that young players have been signing and feel they should be getting commiserate value. The Hurricanes have the leverage though, cause no other team can sign him and he couldn’t plead his case to an arbitrator. Perhaps if he had come over to the United States earlier he’d be in a position to where he could do that, instead the Canes are understandably in a mode of not wanting to sink a lot of money when the potential is there but hasn’t fully shown itself.

As for the desire of the Nikishin side to get a trade, again the Canes have most of the leverage. While they know he may not be a great fit for them they know his value and aren’t going to just give up on him. The sole leverage the Nikishin camp has is not having any promise to sign long term to a new team, thus decreasing his value.

What does this mean now that hockey is actually starting? Really, not much. As much hype as Nikishin had coming in, no one a) expected the team to trade for K’Andre Miller last summer and b) that turn out to be one of the best moves they could have made. The Canes’ blue line looks more solid than it did when Nikishin arrived, and thus there are several young defensemen who’ll be battling to take that spot as well as depth pieces the Canes signed. We’ll see if a deadline forces movement, because in the end Nikishin loses in that he’s in the United States and not earning anything.

Stable Roster

Besides Nikishin how stable is the Canes roster? They lost all of one person from last year’s Cup winning team—Frederik Andersen who is already out with injury for Edmonton. They filled that spot from within as Pyotr Kochetkov comes back to the team fully healed from lower body surgery this past winter and with the chance in the last year of his deal to really cash in—either with the Canes or someone else as he’ll be a UFA next year. Beyond that, everyone that lifted the Cup for the Canes is back, and this is reflected in the Training Camp roster released by the team on Wednesday.

Camp is going to see two groups of players take the ice, and there’s no mixing of the groups. One group is your defending Cup Champs, the other is the group of players that will likely start the season in either Greensboro or Chicago.

So, the only chance players will have to really show what they can do with the main players is before and during the four Pre-Season games. On those days, the camp changes from the major/minor league rosters to game/non-game skaters. That’s likely where we’ll get some sort of clue of any player that has impressed.

Competition for open spots

Despite the amount of stability, the fact remains that there is at least one open spot available to players to start the year, and perhaps two depending on what happens with Nikishin.

The spot is the one belonging to Seth Jarvis. While he’s been spotted on the ice doing some drills before formal camp, there’s still every indication he’ll miss the first couple months of the season so his shoulder can finally be 100%. After a performance that won him a spot in the Four Nations, the Olympics, and hero of the Stanley Cup Game Two, he’s earned the right now to sit back and make sure he’s 100% for hopefully another long run.

Thus, the question is how the lines will be shaken up while Jarvis recovers? Will the team bring up a Bradley Nadeau to give some time, build a true enforcer fourth line with the likes of Nicholas Deslauriers, give Jesperi Kotkaniemi one last real chance to impress so they may be able to fetch a good price for him on the trade market, or all of the above? It also makes one wonder how the lines will be constructed, as Jarvis had been shuffled between the Aho and the Staal lines, and it’s difficult to see the Stankoven line being broken up at least to start.

Short lead up

If you’re thinking that we’re going from zero to hockey in a very short time, you’re not wrong. This is going to be the first season of the 84 game schedule. This was done to bring the NHL back to the setup where you play your division four times, the other division three, and the other conference twice. To commit to playing two more regular season games the players asked for concessions in the preseason which—my guess is—the owners weren’t too upset about giving up.

This means a much shorter Training Camp, two less preseason games, and—much to the dismay of coach Rod Brind’Amour—no more fitness test.

Joking aside, we’ve seen the result of a reduced camp and preseason in the other big contact sport—the NFL—and while you can’t blame the players for wanting to reduce the grind, you can’t help but to think it’ll hit the Hurricanes the hardest of all the teams because of how late they played AND they were spending the time celebrating their Cup win. It’ll be interesting to hear how Brind’Amour speaks of the drills and camp with significantly less time to get his team ready to defend their crown.

The short leadup is probably also going to lead to a rush of information once camp is over. Normally the end of camp carries a four or five day break before the season opens, but this season the Canes play their last preseason game on Saturday, September 26th then open the season on Tuesday, September 29th. Thus once the final horn sounds next Saturday, expect the social media build to be fast and furious.

Are you ready for the season to begin?

The tallest order on the Anaheim Ducks’ late-summer “to do” list has been completed, and just in the nick of time. On Tuesday evening, the team announced they’d signed star forward Cutter Gauthier to a six-year contract extension that carries an AAV of $13.5 million. 

The timing of this signing was significant because not only was this contract signed hours before the expiration of the previous CBA, which limited aspects like maximum number of years and bonus structures, but pen was put to paper two days before the Ducks were set to open their 2026 training camp, thus avoiding a fourth contract negotiation in four years with a high-profile RFA extending into camp.

Ducks Sign Cutter Gauthier to Six-Year Contract Extension

Takeaways from the 2026 Ducks Rookie Camp/Tournament

This will be yet another pivotal year in the Ducks’ build toward true contention, as they’ll now hand the majority of responsibility over to their young, blossoming core and battle the repercussions of losing several key contributors to their successes a year ago. 

The Ducks released their training camp roster and details on Wednesday morning, and they’re inviting 48 players, including 29 forwards, 14 defensemen, and five goaltenders. 

Training camp will both raise and answer several questions for the team as it pertains to the upcoming 2026-27 season. Here are the top storylines to follow ahead of this relatively compressed training camp and preseason:

Who Will Start the Season as LaCombe’s Partner?

Jackson LaCombe is far and away the Ducks’ No. 1 defenseman, and in some views, their only “good” blueliner. He’s their all-situations ice time leader, and his eight-year, $9 million AAV contract kicks in this season. His partner for 861 minutes at 5v5 in the 2025-26 season, Jacob Trouba, has a new home with a division rival after signing a four-year contract with the San Jose Sharks when he hit unrestricted free agency on July 1, leaving the role as “Jackson LaCombe’s Partner” and “Top Pair Defenseman” up for grabs. 

There are several question marks surrounding each of the four candidates up for the role heading into training camp, and the lineup will likely remain a fluid situation on the blueline well into the season.

Drew Helleson (25) is a long-time close friend of LaCombe, but he had his struggles at 5v5 last season, and the pair didn’t have spectacular numbers in their 320 minutes together. The only NHL acquisition the Ducks made on the blueline was Nick Jensen (35), who’s coming off of a knee injury and his days as a top-four defenseman are likely in the rearview. Tristan Luneau (22), although technically not a rookie, is projected to play his first full season at the NHL level. Inserting him directly into a top-pair role, regardless of how talented he is, may be ill-advised. 

Ian Moore (24) may be the frontrunner for the position, as it currently stands. He has the skating ability, IQ, and habits to become a modern-day shutdown defender in head coach Joel Quenneville’s system. Though he surprisingly finished the year as a fourth-line right winger, he played 92 minutes alongside LaCombe in 2025-26, and the pair accounted for 60.6% of the expected goals at 5v5. 

How Many Rookies Will Make the Opening Roster?

From their forward group, the Ducks lost top-six pieces Mason McTavish and Chris Kreider, while Troy Terry is slated to miss the first 2-3 months of the upcoming season. Off the blueline, they lost Jacob Trouba, John Carlson, Radko Gudas, and Olen Zellweger. 

Due to the sizable (to say the least) contracts signed by Leo Carlsson, Pavel Mintyukov, and Cutter Gauthier, the front office wasn’t able to meaningfully replace those players during the offseason. However, after an elongated rebuild, the Ducks’ pipeline is teeming with players desperate for a crack at making the opening night roster and filling a supplemental scoring need. 

The two most notable and highest-profile in that group of players looking to make their NHL debuts and make an immediate impact at the sport’s highest level are Roger McQueen (10th overall in 2025) and Nikita Klepov (15th in ’26). McQueen is fresh off a successful yet relatively unproductive freshman season in the NCAA with Providence College, but brings a pro-ready frame, skill set, and habits. The Ducks surprisingly signed Klepov to an ELC, so he’s either destined for the NHL or OHL in 2026-27. He has an abundance of skill and tenacity in every facet, but has never played against professionals in his career. 

The Ducks will likely need one of, or both, these players to make an immediate impact to mitigate some of what was lost in the offseason and what they’ll be without early in the regular season. Relying on rookies to contribute off the bat can be a dangerous gamble, but the Ducks have had success in this realm in the recent past with Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, and Beckett Sennecke. 

Will Frank Vatrano Earn Back Trust?

The Ducks signed veteran forward Frank Vatrano to a three-year contract extension in the winter of 2025, and the first year of said extension didn’t go as anticipated in the slightest. After averaging 26 goals and 48 points through his first three seasons with the organization, he hit an unexpected speed bump in 2025-26.

While dealing with a new coach and system that aren’t quite conducive to his play style, Vatrano suffered a significant shoulder injury and dealt with an off-ice personal situation. Once a meaningful piece of the Ducks’ present and future, Vatrano finished the season with just nine points (5-4=9) in 50 games. 

Much like the case with Klepov and McQueen, there will be openings in the Ducks’ top nine heading into the season, as they’ll be without half of their top six from a year ago, at least to start the year, until Troy Terry returns from injury. If Vatrano can bounce back in any meaningful way and to any extent, coupled with internal growth from the young core and a rookie or two making an impact, there’s a real possibility the Ducks’ forward group can make up for the losses of McTavish and Kreider in the aggregate. 

Vatrano has proven that when placed in a position to succeed, he can provide his team with instant, depth scoring while impacting play with a high motor and forechecking prowess. 

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